Annalee Newitz

Former ad copywriter Graham Button is concerned about the future - specifically, the future of marketing taglines. How can companies remain buzzword compliant in a rapidly-changing world? Over at Fast Company, he's offered ten taglines for tomorrow.

Button explains that he was partly inspired by Fareed Zakaria's The Post-American World, and partly by David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest. Here are his suggestions as a tagline futurist:

1. "Oceanic potential"
Food, minerals, power. The U.S. has not one but a couple of big-time oceans conveniently on hand. Not to mention the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, an A-list celebrity in the world of water.

2. "The glass floor"
In the next few months women will become the majority of the U.S. workforce. In several rich countries they're already the majority of professional workers, and the college pipelines are primed. Surely there are market opportunities here? Gentlemen?

3. "Beyond media-obesity"
It's the era of Big Entertainment. We have a glut of content and ways to network it. As with Big Food, we gorge ourselves. We can, so we do. But what happens when the consumption disorders set in? Maybe now's the time to monetize healthy media habits?

4. "The human mine"
The U.S. didn't invent psychotherapy, but it sure understood the applications. Therapy has become a way of life with its own dialect. Now here comes Neuromarketing, which plans to brain-map consumption. Sounds like a job for House.

5. "Unlocking the cell"
While the U.S. struggles with the separation of church and state, the rest of the world is more pragamatic about the benefits of stem cell research. Surely the nation of enterprise can find a way to connect with this market.

6. "Diamonds in the rough"
Online microlending allows you and me to help someone with a name, living in poverty, to fund something real. It doesn't take a Malcolm Gladwell to work out that among all those people, there's a Bill Gates or two. Shouldn't someone be looking for them?

7. "Out of this world"
This year NASA's Challenger fleet will be mothballed, and the President could opt for a replacement from a commercial company. How about a commercial division, Mr. President? Let the markets do the heavy lifting?

8. "News that's not afraid to go there"
TV coverage in Taiwan of the recent Tiger Woods scandal broke new ground. Computer-generated avatars of Woods and his wife showed what you might have seen if you had been a third wheel on that fateful night. With Bollywood and gaming exploding, maybe Hollywood could find a market in "reporting"?

9 "Better than sex"
Of course, nothing's better than great sex. But maybe there's a product—a fantasy experience, a food—that is genuinely better than the routine kind? Maybe for the luxury-hungry elites of the emerging rich markets? We should at least research this.

10 "The art of money"
This tagline is specifically for Damien Hirst. Not a new American company, I admit, but it's probably time he had one.